Apple's education event just ended, and just as Ars Technica said, Apple announced better support for textbooks, as well as a textbook authoring tool. The textbook authoring tool is heavily inspired by Keynote and Pages, and hence, I already know it's going to be top-notch and very pleasant to use. In addition, the company also repositioned iTunes U as a Blackboard competitor. As great as all these new tools are, several large red flags went up in my mind: I remember what it was like being the only student who didn't use Windows. Update: "Any e-textbook author that wants access to the iPad-toting masses must make his or her work an exclusive to iBooks 2."

So, there's a clear indicator on the Mac App Store page for iBooks Author that says that any books created with it have to be exclusive to the iBookstore.

This seems reasonable to me. Apple are providing iBooks Author for free, so ensuring that products created to them are exclusive to the iBookstore ensures they get a return on their software development investment.

What I'm not seeing though is any evidence that the iBookstore has changed their terms and conditions to say that textbooks have to be exclusive on that store only. A one paragraph Engadget post doesn't count.

I'm also not seeing any evidence that Apple have moved away from the ePub format for iBooks. That's still an open specification.

It seems to me that textbook authors are still free to create textbooks that can be distributed on any ebook store - they'll just need to use a different authoring tool than Apple's iBooks Author if they want to do that.

This seems reasonable to me. Apple are providing iBooks Author for free, so ensuring that products created to them are exclusive to the iBookstore ensures they get a return on their software development investment.

It is reasonable and they should be able to do that. Apple is not a company that is trying to change the world like Google. But schools should have a long term vision and try to make the best decision for students. This means you should avoid lock in because in the long term it would be more expensive and less flexible.